From My Perspective: Some Interesting News From Around The World

Science: Venkatraman Ramakrishnan wins Nobel Prize for Chemistry

Tamil Nadu-born Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a senior scientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2009 along with two others, the Nobel Committee announced today.

It is only fitting on a day where the price of gold hit a new, nominal high that I should discuss the last days of the US dollar as a “reserve currency”. An ounce of gold is what it is: the world’s oldest and most widely-accepted money. It can never increase (or decrease) in value. Instead, it is the pseudo-money, the paper “fiat currencies” which are currently all plunging steadily downward in value — with no currency able to keep up with the collapse of the US dollar.

Today, Bagan Pinang voters will decide whether to continue vote for BN or otherwise. As far as my reading is concerned, it is hard to find honest and non-bias news on Malaysian politics in the internet.

Saturn’s ring system has just got a lot larger, with the discovery of a faint ring that stretches out millions of kilometres into space.

But this new ring, which follows the orbit of one of Saturn’s moons, Phoebe, is unlike any of the other rings that are closer to the planet: as well as being much thicker and wider, it is tilted from the plane of the other rings.

It’s a story stretching across five generations that traces a family’s path from slavery to the White House.

Pres. Obama’s rise to the nation’s top political office marked a historic moment for African-Americans but now, newly discovered genealogical records connecting Michelle Obama’s family tree directly to a former slave make the first couple’s journey even more symbolic.